Science Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract

In this chapter, we focus on the global need for sustainable development. The increasing awareness that the quality of education is critical for sustainable development has led authors in high-quality science and science education journals to call for the improvement of education. Yet, the different often-simultaneously proposed educational approaches that can be found in science journals commonly are grounded in epistemologies that mitigate against the very attitudes that are to be propagated. That is, they call for reproducible and testable science education to which epicized images of science are inherent. This contrasts with an education into science as a novelizing discourse in which students learn to act in their own lifeworld and hence to participate in the construction of images of science. To overcome such contradictions, we present a form of science education rooted in a holistic epistemology that is grounded in human evolution and the notion of collective human activity as the pivotal unit of individuals’ transaction with the natural world. Drawing on data from an environmental education project, we exemplify how this epistemology allows a dual contribution to both the improvement of education and sustainable development. As such, we rethink the epistemological underpinnings of science education as a means to contribute to novelizing discourse, resulting in a science education as a form of sustainable development.